We are all aware this is the guy whose previous conviction for Holocaust activities was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court, yes ?
His is a complex and confusing case :- he was almost certainly guilty of something during the Nazi era, but it’s not clear what. What is clear is that he wasn’t Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka, despite Treblinka survivors at the Israeli trial testifying that he was.
One of the main pieces of evidence against him at this trial seems to be a Nazi era German-issued ID card, which the head of the German Federal Police’s forensic service declared in the 80’s to be a Russian forgery.
And in any event, from what’s publicly available, all the evidence against him seems to just place him at Sobibor :- there doesn’t seem to be anything establishing what his duties or activities there were. German courts have acquitted people who served in Aktion Reinhard extermination camps, if there was no evidence linking them to the actual killing process.
To summarise, I’m basically saying is that Demjanjuk is not a good examplar in the debate about the wisdom of pursuing Holocaust war criminals at this time, on the grounds that it’s entirely possible that if he survives his trial, he’ll be acquitted anyway.
The matter is subjudice.
And I really don’t think being at Sobibor itself is a crime, as long as he did not participate in the activities.
It certainly did not prevent the Hindus and Sikhs from killing nearly a million muslims in 1947 (or muslims returning the favour), or the events in the Balkans in the last decade or in Cambodia, or Rawanda or in Chilie.
We seem to be wandering off the original topic. Is this a discussion about whether it serves any purpose to try an alleged war criminal sixty years after the crimes occurred as a matter of general principle? Or is it a discussion about whether John Demjanjuk as an individual should be retried for war crimes?
I’m aware of all of the war crimes you’ve mentioned. And I’m sure I’ve heard of some you haven’t. I never claimed that punishment prevented every war crime after WWII. So what’s your point?
I believe it was necessary and correct to punish the war criminals after WW 2. It probably side stepped Stalin killing a few hundred thousand Germans which was his view of justice. Whther the correct criminals were tried is another matter- clearly some of the most blood thirsty escaped justice at the time.
I was more wondering what will be achieved by the pursuit of such a low level figure after all this time will achieve.
One other point- it seems that only Germans (or those who acted on their behalf) are pursued. Why is there no interest in pursuing Japanese war criminals who were guilty of barbaric treatment?
Well, some people in the world have these things called “principles” that they actually try to live by and adhere to. True, there a probably a lot more people who have absolutely no principles and therefore can’t really understand why people feel that they’re important, but to one who has principles, they are very, very important indeed. Tossing them aside just because aw, hey, it was something that happened quite awhile back now, really isn’t that easy for people who are accustomed to adhering to their principles. And being a mass murderer? Well, that’s one of the things that’s kind o’ hard for people who have and adhere to principles to just sorta turn a blind eye to, shrug off, and say “Aw, what the heck? Who really cares anymore anyway?” To people who grasp the concept of having principles, they’re pretty much all-the-time things, not on-again-off-again notions.
My uneducated opinion: The victims of the Germans were European, and the victims of the Japanese were Asian, far from the hearts and minds of the Allies. A Manchurian Schindler’s list would never sell. Unit 731 far surpassed in evil anything the Germans ever did, and yet General MacArthur let most of the perpetrators escape death and go free in return for their information and services. In fact he pretty much went out of his way to defend and exonerate Japanese war criminals, including the goddamned emperor. I think the Americans, British, et al. had a hard time feeling outrage for the crimes perpetrated by the Japanese and did a laughable job of trying them, while the post wartime propaganda machine was blowing full steam in the West and crushing the Nazis under its tracks. The more the Nazis were demonized, the more the English/American forces were glorified, while in popular awareness Japan just kinda segued into that funny island country with the schoolgirls and crazy fashion and cute stationery. The victors of the war had no interest in painting Asian victims in a glorified light, and they had little in demonizing the Japanese too much either–after all they’d just dropped the fucking atom bomb on them, there might have been the tiniest awareness of guilt.
I guess my main point in that emotional drivel is that these Nazi trials are as public spectacles as much as they are anything else, and there just wasn’t a western audience for the Japanese pyre.
This. The victors get to choose who the criminals of the war were. Obviously, had things turned out differently it might have been the English and the Americans who were still being put on trial for their wartime deeds.
Personally, I think that given the amount of time that’s passed, and the possibilities of a fair trial now, it is time to stop war trials. That said, having been born some 30 years after the end of the war, maybe my view is less valid.
Name one murder in recorded human history where you think that the murderer should get away with it.
His point is that their deaths are permanent. It’s not like he broke their leg, it healed and now many moons later we want to try him for assault. He, if it all is true anyway, killed them. Surely we understand that a trial doesn’t resurrect the dead, but it is the only system we have for expressing how we find it unacceptable. Either that or do you think a SFW (stern finger wagging) is sufficient?
I did have a book (well not quite a book) that was a transcription of a trial of- from memory- a Japanese soldier in what is now Indonesia. During the war he murdered a missionary and a captured allied airman. It was little more of a transcript of the “court” proceedings. War criminals from the east were prosecuted but there seems to be little zest for finding them now in the same way the ex Nazis are hunted.
Well, to be fair, this guy you mention only murdered one person and captured another. While any murder is bad, I think in terms of scale whatever quantity of “bad” one murder has, surely multiplying that degree of bad by 29,000 would necessarily require a zeal 29,000 times as great in catching the culprit(s).
And to iterate, and expand on, an earlier point of mine: it’s not like the dude in question went around and broke 29,000 people’s legs; he (again, if the allegations are true) murdered 29,000 people. I can’t imagine any system of justice or even morality which would essentially reward him with never being called to account for actions merely because he’s been able to avoid any punishment for 60 years. I don’t care if he’s got cancer, aids, the plague and anal-warts the size of tennis balls, and is going to die of old age the day after he goes to jail; he deserves to be relentlessly hunted down and dealt with like the subhuman animal he is.
I’m no great fan of the death penalty, but I think there comes a point when what a person has done is so egregious that he forfeits the right to be treated with basic human rights (after conviction anyway) such that his death is the only acceptable form of recompense available. To say he should be executed (if it’s true) is putting it mildly. This bastard should be killed, resurrected and killed again. And again. 29,000 times over. By the most sadistic means we can contrive. Or, as I implied earlier, perhaps we should just give him a stern finger wagging and make him promise to never commit genocide again.
Oops- my bad grammar- i meant he also beheaded the captured Australian airman. Not that it makes much difference in the context of the numbers you raise.
The problem for me is that after 60 years, there is a small chance you’ll get a “big fish”. The real perpetrators of this horrible crimes are all dead. Nowadays you have the chance to prosecute people who were low rank and that, possibly, their crime was mitigated by (i) they were young (ii) they were junior officers or NCO (iii) they lacked the courage to refuse to carry on order.
This guy wasn’t a criminal mastermind, he was a guard.
It worries me, because of events in my country, Argentina. Major criminals of our little dirty war were tried and condemmed in the 80s (later they were pardoned and tried and condemmed again). Almost 30 years have passed from those events, the people responsable are, for the most part, still alive but, what will happen in 10 or 20 years? Are we going to continue prosecuting people well in the 21 century for things that happened in the 1970? Where do we draw the line?
I think that, in a sense, the guard that didn’t refuse to carry out an illegal order is not much more guilty that the society that wasn’t capable of stopping the people giving those kind of orders.
Prosecuting this guy might seem like a ridiculous waste of time and money and an act of posturing and exhibitionism, and in some ways, it is, but in other ways maybe it’s important to bring closure to the survivors who might have suffered under this guy, or lost family to him.
I view the Ukrainians, the Baltic peoples, the Bosnians, Albanians and Croats as equally culpable in the Holocaust. These nations enthusiastically collaborated with the Nazis, in many cases killing Jews themselves with special units organized by their own governments and filled out in ranks by eager volunteers.
And I say this as a Jew with family who was killed in the Holocaust (in Greece - yes, the Jews of Greece were killed by the Nazis, including the Bosnian and Albanian SS units. The war record of Bosnia and Albania during the Holocaust is one of the things that makes me a staunch supporter of Serbian nationalism, my close friendships with Serbs being another. I proudly wear a Serbian flag pin on my lapel when I dress up, to show my support.) But I digress.
QUOTE=Estilicon;11310969]The problem for me is that after 60 years, there is a small chance you’ll get a “big fish”. The real perpetrators of this horrible crimes are all dead. Nowadays you have the chance to prosecute people who were low rank and that, possibly, their crime was mitigated by (i) they were young (ii) they were junior officers or NCO (iii) they lacked the courage to refuse to carry on order.
This guy wasn’t a criminal mastermind, he was a guard.
It worries me, because of events in my country, Argentina. Major criminals of our little dirty war were tried and condemmed in the 80s (later they were pardoned and tried and condemmed again). Almost 30 years have passed from those events, the people responsable are, for the most part, still alive but, what will happen in 10 or 20 years? Are we going to continue prosecuting people well in the 21 century for things that happened in the 1970? Where do we draw the line?
I think that, in a sense, the guard that didn’t refuse to carry out an illegal order is not much more guilty that the society that wasn’t capable of stopping the people giving those kind of orders.
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I know what you mean. It’s sometimes sad that people are actually sometimes judged based on what they have done, huh? No one is claiming that he just lacked the ability to stop the Nazis-at-large. Hell, that took most of the world. He didn’t simply not stop them, he chose to assist them by doing some of the killing for them himself. At least that’s what I understand. If that’s true that he did x number of killings of (and let’s say that the jews weren’t “innocent”, let’s just say unconvicted, and unarmed), then his life is forfeit. Unfortunately, we can only kill this guy once. And even sadder is that, if we do, it’ll be a far less painful death than his victims.
There is no amount of pressure, even if it means my death, that would induce me towards an end I think is manifestly unjust. I simply, no matter what, would not kill unarmed, unconvicted people simply because it’s popular to do so. Apparently, he had no such compunction.
And wouldn’t it just be terrible if word got out that committing such acts leaves one forever in a state of being nabbed, prosecuted and killed in return for having nabbed (not prosecuted) and killed other people? I mean, sheesh, it’s almost unspeakable to think that showing how much we disapprove of genocide is a bad thing.